


connected

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Clothed Sex, Daisy And Her Huge Crush On Coulson, Daisy loses her powers, Dry Humping, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers, using her powers during sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 16:32:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10925694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy loses her powers for a while. The way they come back is almost too clichéd (no, not like that).





	connected

She doesn’t keep it a secret, because she knows from experience how badly that tends to end. But she gives herself 24 hours, in case it’s a false alarm or just exhaustion.

What haunts her is that she didn’t notice when they went away.

She thought she’d be able to tell, the moment the tendrils of power stopped running through her body. But she didn’t. All of the sudden she was training one morning, alone, trying to come up with new moves, testing new limits and it just… wasn’t there anymore.

Daisy starts feeling cold after that. Not physically, not something her doctors should worry about. She just feels like something inside her has been turned off, every cell of her body becoming harder.

She had felt hopeless without her powers in the Framework, but in the back of her mind she knew it wasn’t real, that as soon as she went back to the real world she’d be a fully formed Inhuman again, so she wasn’t that worried.

This is different.

There has been no trigger, no logical explanation.

“So, I lost my powers,” she says, shrugging like it’s something half sad and half funny, to a room with Coulson and Mack.

She expects her life to change drastically afterwards, but it doesn’t. She just feels _not here_ anymore. Well, a part of her. She can’t explain it well, and that’s frustrating. Plus everybody is very nice about it, which makes her feel even more useless.

She’s not useless.

She knows this, at least. 

But she doesn’t want to make mistakes. She feels disconnected from around her in a way that might be a distraction, put other agents in danger. It’s not numbness - she knows numbness well, she knows numbness by heart, since she was thirteen. Numbness is not cold like this. 

_Daisy doesn’t live here anymore_ , she thinks, darkly.

Even without her powers she leads the missions. She had been training hard for years so that she wouldn’t be too reliant on them, not because she imagined something like this would happen, but because she had learned, back when she was a hacker, that it’s good to have a balanced set of skills. She tries even harder without her powers, of course So much that it becomes so evident that one afternoon Coulson shows up in her bunk with two bottles of beer.

“Are you going to tell me to loosen up because that way my powers will come back?” she asks from her bed, eyeing him in confrontation.

Coulson shakes his head and takes a seat in the chair next to her. “I’m telling you to loosen up for the sake of loosening up,” he tells her.

“Fair enough,” she shrugs, smiles a bit at him, and takes the beer from his hand.

She bets he’s wondering if he put too much pressure on her and now she’s cracking, if he misjudged her. She’s not Director of SHIELD, but unofficially she’s in charge. What had seemed like Coulson’s delusion months ago ended up feeling like the most logical step for the team. Daisy didn’t mind the extra work - and there was a lot of it, somehow she is acquiring extra respect for Coulson and his years of directorship - but she still feels like she is just playing leader, rather than being one.

Of course her powers suddenly going “poof!” isn’t helping the whole impostor’s syndrome situation.

She drinks in silence, and Coulson waits for her to give any indication that she wants to talk about it. It’s nice, pretending they are just having a beer because they feel like it, nothing traumatic in their lives this time. Daisy would want that, some time. It’s almost worth pretending there’s nothing wrong with her body, that she is complete like this, a regular badass SHIELD agent like him. A human like him.

But Coulson likes fixing things - she relates to that. He tries to find an explanation, patiently, not rushing her, gently asking questions out loud.

In the end he came to the same conclusion she did, just a couple of days later.

“You think it’s because of… everything that is being said in the media.”

It’s not just the media, she knows their fearmongering, it’s happened before. But people are afraid. She doesn’t blame them. It didn’t matter that the Inhuman that had terrorized their lives was a fake, artificial one. They just knew her powers were Inhuman. The powers killing them, scaring them were Inhuman.

“I know a lot about internalizing bad stuff you hear about yourself,” Daisy says, without realizing, more confessional than she meant. More confessional than she has ever been. Perhaps because she doesn’t feel like herself.

“You’ll change their minds,” he says.

Such a human, Daisy thinks, almost resenting him.

“I don’t want to have to change their minds,” she says, because really, she shouldn’t have to be this faultless hero saving dogs and babies for people to think Inhumans might have a right to exist. Her voice is ugly, and too forceful. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to chew _you_ out.”

“It’s fine,” Coulson says. “I just came by to see how you were feeling.”

That one’s easy, Daisy thinks.

“I feel like - like I’m missing a limb.”

Coulson’s expression doesn’t change, but Daisy realizes what she’s said. _Shit_.

“Shit, I’m sorry. Coulson, I...”

He smiles. “It’s okay. Your powers are part of you, of course that’s how you feel.”

She swallows back the rest of the apology. There’s a certain companionship in his voice, and that’s horrible, and Daisy feels bad for liking it.

“It’s funny, it makes me feel guilty for how hard I wish I didn’t have them, back when I changed,” she says out loud, even though it’s more a thought than something Coulson needs to know. She’s whining at this point, she knows.

She sighs and Coulson leaves the chair to sit by her side on the bed.

“That’s normal too,” he says. “So is being impatient. But don’t forget you were keeping the team safe way before you got your powers. Hell, in your first day at SHIELD you saved all our asses blowing a hole in my plane.”

Daisy narrows her eyes at the unwitting confession.

“I thought we agreed it was _everybody’s idea_.”

Coulson gives her a soft, amused, almost nostalgic look.

“Yeah,” he says. “But I always knew whose idea it really was. It was very much like you.”

“Destruction of property, yeah that sounds like me. It’s what you get for hiring a Rising Tide member.”

“Thinking outside the box,” he corrects her. “Not caring about rules and regulations when it comes to keeping people alive.”

It makes her smile, hell, it makes her feel better than she’s felt since her powers went away, or even before, she can’t remember. And it’s so Coulson.

“I know I can do the job without my powers but…” she tenses her jaw. For all the times she has cried in front of Coulson she always finds crying in front of him more mortifying than in front of anyone else. “I just miss them.”

Coulson puts one arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him. It’s only half-a-hug, really, but it’s the first time she’s let anyone touch her since she lost her powers.

 

+

 

They have connecting rooms, and a big couch in Coulson’s room. They thought they needed the break, instead of coming home immediately. Daisy bought cheap beer on the way - she prefers it to the fancy mini fridge stuff, only that novelty worn off.

Daisy has changed into street clothes because she couldn’t check into the hotel with her Quake outfit, could she.

Maybe postponing the return trip to DC has to do with her skepticism over the day’s events. She reaches her hand and works on vibrating the bottle in front of her, making it rattle slightly on the coffee table.

“I still can’t believe it,” she says.

Coulson nods. These past few weeks he hadn’t been neither kindly dismissive (“relax, the powers will come back on their own”) like Mack and Elena, nor scientifically curious and gloomy like Simmons. He had waited.

“It’s a good thing they came back when they did,” is his comment.

She studies his face. Even though it’s been hours since their mission, their brush with whatever new anti-Inhuman group was buying weapons from the government this time, and his hair still doesn’t look right. It looks ruffled at least. There’s a bruise on his temple, matching the one on her elbow. It occurs to Daisy that maybe her powers came back _because they had to_. But that’s too convenient. And the thought sappy. Revealingly sappy.

“It seems like a cliché,” she says. Something out of a superhero movie or something. She was sure Coulson was going to die back there, she was too far to help and everything was happening too fast and - then everything stopped and she felt it, the tendrils of power igniting something inside her.

“How so?”

“My powers returning just when I needed them to save the life of the guy I - the life of someone I cared about.”

She looks away, frowning, she doesn’t like having said that, making that mistake, putting that on Coulson.

Daisy never really decided to be in love with him. If that’s even what this is. Coulson is family, but not like Cal or Jiaying, and a partner, but not like Mack, and a friend, but not like a Elena or Jemma. She knows she loves him, and that includes every kind of love, which is probably fucked up, but she’s done fucked up love before, and it didn’t feel like this. 

Meanwhile Coulson has gone quiet, understandably. Daisy takes a sip from her beer, knowing he won’t hate her for this. It might get uncomfortable - they will probably have to cut the celebration short - but he won’t hate her. He loves her. She knows that. Even if the way he loves her doesn’t line up with hers, that’s okay, that’s enough.

Then he starts talking in a soft, dreamlike voice.

“When I was a kid I dreamed Captain America would come to my rescue,” he says.

Daisy feels tempted to raise an eyebrow. “You didn’t dream you were Captain America.”

“No, I always dreamed I was the _rescuee_. But this is better,” Coulson says. “You’re better.”

She kisses him after that, because well, she kind of has to, he’s just said he thinks she’s better than Captain America. It’s brief and impulsive and she’s never impulsive (she plays impulsive, _very well_ ). She’s not sure if it’s a good kiss or what, because it’s been so long. Coulson opens his mouth, and even kisses her back, but he also grabs her shoulder and pulls her away.

“Sorry. You didn’t like that,” Daisy says, tongue ready for a sequel apology.

“No, no,” he replies. She likes how quickly he says it. “I’m just worried… you just got back your powers, you’re happy, you might be just-”

“Confused?” she rolls her eyes. Men. Even Coulson. Always thinking they know your feelings better than you did. “I’ve wanted to kiss you before this, Coulson.”

His surprised expression is somewhat colored by slight delight, which tells Daisy not all is lost.

“You have?”

“Couple of times,” Daisy says, tilting her head, voice fake mysterious. This is fun and Coulson has his hand on her hip, which is even more fun.

“Tell me?” he asks.

“Later,” she replies, pressing her mouth against his again.

She likes taking the initiative, it makes her feel safe. She likes the way Coulson lets her, so much that he soon ends up pinned to the couch, with Daisy straddling his lap. The beginning of her arousal is a mild rumbling inside her veins and she can’t believe she didn’t notice the moment her powers disappeared, because she has been missing this. She must have made an odd face, because Coulson stops kissing her for a moment, looking up.

“What?”

She shakes her head, pressing her hips against his thigh. “Nothing, it just feels good to have my powers back.”

Not just because of what her powers can do - like save Coulson’s life today, which would be good enough - but because of what her powers make her feel, make her be. She has missed them, and she savours the feeling of sending tiny vibrations through her fingers, as she grabs the couch and grinds her groin against Coulson like a teenager. 

“It feels good here too,” Coulson tells her, drawing her hands to his shoulders.

Daisy gives him a questioning look but he nods encouragingly, drawing her hands lower, towards his collarbone, his chest. It’s not something Daisy had explored before - not even with Lincoln, whose powers could literally counter hers, but they never tried anything like this, she was having sex like a human then, and Lincoln wouldn’t have wanted the reminder anyway. It’s a bit scary, but exhilarating (she feels bad that it turns her on, so she doesn’t use those words), and she knows she wouldn’t lose control if that meant hurting Coulson so she tries it.

Little vibrations, right over the skin, controlled, small is harder than big, she can move a mountain but this is her real skill.

Coulson’s hips jerk up. 

“Amazing,” he says, pressing her fingers to her knuckles, like he is trying to feel what she feels when she is in control of her powers like this. Daisy moves her hands from his chest to her own body, trying to connect them. It feels really good, her own powers over her own skin, under her skin, like feeding back to the core that let them loose.

She hasn’t been alone with her powers all day, not really.

She doesn’t need Coulson to touch her, she only needs him to watch her. He seems to sense this and his stare becomes more blatantly appreciative. Does this mean she’s an exhibitionist now? It doesn’t worry her as much as she thinks it should. And if so then Coulson is definitely a voyeur, so they’re even, she decides, moving her body along his thigh, feeling his erection even through his pants, and she can hardly believe all this is happening.

Using her powers this way, fingers skimming over the fabric of her shirt, over her breasts, over the fabric of her jeans, deep vibrations between her legs, focusing on her clit, and never breaking eye contact with Coulson, she finally doesn’t feel that cold anymore, the freezing hopelessness that had lodged between her muscles, in her flesh, when she wasn’t able to use her powers. That was gone. She feels back in her own body and though obviously he is not doing it for that reason she feels like she should be thanking Coulson.

And it’s not just her own body she feels connected to again. It’s corny but her powers make her feel part of the universe, the threads from her to everything and everybody else. To Coulson, right now. She can feel his every cell as if she were physically touching them. 

“I’m close,” she says, half using her powers to get herself off, and half rubbing herself against Coulson’s hip. 

“Are you asking permission?” Coulson says, choked laughter, and it’s very charming and it’s very sexy - she hadn’t thought that far ahead, she knew she loved him, not that she’d find him sexy.

“No, I’m not,” she jokes back, teasing waves of vibrations across his groin. She watches him open his mouth and close it again, a hitch in his breathing. His eyes still fixed on her, like he’s afraid of missing a single second.

That sends her over the edge (she’s always hated that expression, but now she gets it, it’s not grim, it’s about falling), and part of it is being in her body again, feeling complete, and part of it is feeling wanted by this person she trusts so much; part of it is loving herself right in this moment as much as she loves Coulson. Daisy thinks he’d be fine with that.

She collapses on top of him, realizing neither of them has taken off a piece of clothing just yet. 

Coulson lazily threads his fingers through her hair. Daisy can feel it’s his left hand, through the vibrations. She’s missed that too. Being able to zoom in on a person like this.

“Give me a moment and we’ll do you,” she says, lifting her head to look at him, because it’s only polite.

“The same way?” he asks, voice dripping amazement and arousal.

“If you want,” Daisy replies.

Somehow since very early in their relationship she had always felt Coulson loved every part of her. Now she knows she was right.


End file.
